This invention relates, generally, to tea flavor enhancement and, in particular, to the addition of flavoring substances to soluble tea in an amount and composition for achieving the flavor and aroma of fresh tea in a finally-reconstituted tea product.
There are presently available a wide variety of tea products that are sold commercially, for example green tea, black tea, soluble tea compositions and liquid teas.
Green tea is categorized as including freshly-gathered tea leaves, tea leaves that have been freshly-gathered and dried immediately, tea leaves that have been heat treated before drying, and aqueous extracts of these tea leaves. In each instance, the green tea has undergone substantially no fermentation to the black state.
Black tea, on the other hand, is generally made from green tea leaves by subjecting the leaves to a series of processing conditions including (1) withering, (2) rolling or otherwise breaking up the cells to initiate enzymic activity, (3) fermenting, and (4) firing. Rolling or otherwise breaking up the cells initiates the enzymic reaction of fermentation during which the character, color, flavor and aroma of black tea are developed. When the fermentation has progressed sufficiently, it is arrested by firing the tea leaves (i.e. drying) and the resulting product possesses the characteristic appearance, flavor, color and aroma of black tea.
Instant or soluble tea compositions, generally classified as either cold or hot-water soluble teas, are customarily prepared from the black tea leaves by extracting them either before or after they are dried. The extract (a) is then concentrated (b) may be dried if so desired and (c) otherwise processed according to well-known methods to produce cold and/or hot-water soluble teas.
It is well recognized in the beverage field that the flavor and aroma of tea beverages reside primarily in their volatile components. Accordingly, conventional soluble tea products, while commercially acceptable, leave much to be desired since very substantial amounts of these volatile components are lost during the processing operation necessary to convert the leaf tea of commerce into soluble tea products. These losses of volatiles occur at various processing stages, but in particular during (a) the step of concentration of the dilute extract, and (b) the subsequent step of drying the concentrated extract. Even though some of the volatile components which are removed with the water during the concentration step above can be recovered such as by partial condensation or by other processes known to those skilled in the art, and thus can be reincorporated into the concentrated extracts prior to drying, the relative proportions of key volatile and aroma components are inevitably altered under commercial processing conditions and the flavor and aroma of the resulting extract is not very satisfactory. Another problem is encountered during the drying operation mentioned above since here again key volatile and aroma components are either lost or altered. Necessarily, the losses suffered by each of the components differs depending upon processing conditions, i.e., spray drying, freeze drying, percent solids in the extract, etc.